UILabel drop-in replacement supporting Hashtags and URLs written in Swift

by iOS Example

ActiveLabel.swift

UILabel drop-in replacement supporting Hashtags (#), Mentions (@), URLs (http://) and custom regex patterns, written in Swift.

Features

  • Swift 5.0 (1.1.0) and 4.2 (1.0.1)
  • Default support for Hashtags, Mentions, Links
  • Support for custom types via regex
  • Ability to enable highlighting only for the desired types
  • Ability to trim urls
  • Super easy to use and lightweight
  • Works as UILabel drop-in replacement
  • Well tested and documented

Install (iOS 10+)

Carthage

Add the following to your Cartfile and follow these instructions

github "optonaut/ActiveLabel.swift"

CocoaPods

CocoaPods 0.36 adds supports for Swift and embedded frameworks. To integrate ActiveLabel into your project add the following to your Podfile:

platform :ios, '10.0'
use_frameworks!

pod 'ActiveLabel'

Usage

import ActiveLabel

let label = ActiveLabel()
label.numberOfLines = 0
label.enabledTypes = [.mention, .hashtag, .url]
label.text = "This is a post with #hashtags and a @userhandle."
label.textColor = .black
label.handleHashtagTap { hashtag in
    print("Success. You just tapped the \(hashtag) hashtag")
}

Custom types

let customType = ActiveType.custom(pattern: "\\swith\\b") //Regex that looks for "with"
label.enabledTypes = [.mention, .hashtag, .url, customType]
label.text = "This is a post with #hashtags and a @userhandle."
label.customColor[customType] = UIColor.purple
label.customSelectedColor[customType] = UIColor.green
    
label.handleCustomTap(for: customType) { element in 
    print("Custom type tapped: \(element)") 
}

Enable/disable highlighting

By default, an ActiveLabel instance has the following configuration

label.enabledTypes = [.mention, .hashtag, .url]

But feel free to enable/disable to fit your requirements

Batched customization

When using ActiveLabel, it is recommended to use the customize(block:) method to customize it. The reason is that ActiveLabel is reacting to each property that you set. So if you set 3 properties, the textContainer is refreshed 3 times.

When using customize(block:), you can group all the customizations on the label, that way ActiveLabel is only going to refresh the textContainer once.

Example:

label.customize { label in
    label.text = "This is a post with #multiple #hashtags and a @userhandle."
    label.textColor = UIColor(red: 102.0/255, green: 117.0/255, blue: 127.0/255, alpha: 1)
    label.hashtagColor = UIColor(red: 85.0/255, green: 172.0/255, blue: 238.0/255, alpha: 1)
    label.mentionColor = UIColor(red: 238.0/255, green: 85.0/255, blue: 96.0/255, alpha: 1)
    label.URLColor = UIColor(red: 85.0/255, green: 238.0/255, blue: 151.0/255, alpha: 1)
    label.handleMentionTap { self.alert("Mention", message: $0) }
    label.handleHashtagTap { self.alert("Hashtag", message: $0) }
    label.handleURLTap { self.alert("URL", message: $0.absoluteString) }
}

Trim long urls

You have the possiblity to set the maximum lenght a url can have;

label.urlMaximumLength = 30

From now on, a url that's bigger than that, will be trimmed.

https://afancyurl.com/whatever -> https://afancyurl.com/wh...

API

mentionColor: UIColor = .blueColor()
mentionSelectedColor: UIColor?
hashtagColor: UIColor = .blueColor()
hashtagSelectedColor: UIColor?
URLColor: UIColor = .blueColor()
URLSelectedColor: UIColor?
customColor: [ActiveType : UIColor]
customSelectedColor: [ActiveType : UIColor]
lineSpacing: Float?
handleMentionTap: (String) -> ()
label.handleMentionTap { userHandle in print("\(userHandle) tapped") }
handleHashtagTap: (String) -> ()
label.handleHashtagTap { hashtag in print("\(hashtag) tapped") }
handleURLTap: (NSURL) -> ()
label.handleURLTap { url in UIApplication.shared.openURL(url) }
handleCustomTap(for type: ActiveType, handler: (String) -> ())
label.handleCustomTap(for: customType) { element in print("\(element) tapped") }
filterHashtag: (String) -> Bool
label.filterHashtag { hashtag in validHashtags.contains(hashtag) }
filterMention: (String) -> Bool
label.filterMention { mention in validMentions.contains(mention) }

Alternatives

Before writing ActiveLabel we've tried a lot of the following alternatives but weren't quite satisfied with the quality level or ease of usage, so we decided to contribute our own solution.

  • TTTAttributedLabel (ObjC) - A drop-in replacement for UILabel that supports attributes, data detectors, links, and more
  • STTweetLabel (ObjC) - A UILabel with #hashtag @handle and links tappable
  • AMAttributedHighlightLabel (ObjC) - A UILabel subclass with mention/hashtag/link highlighting
  • KILabel (ObjC) - A simple to use drop in replacement for UILabel for iOS 7 and above that highlights links such as URLs, twitter style usernames and hashtags and makes them touchable

GitHub